Gunshot leads to speeded-up piece of machinery

Or is it 'sped-up'?

My apologies for making light of last week's Amtrak tragedy, but this recent focus on an object of some sort striking the train and a 'grapefruit-sized fracture' on the locomotive windshield is just a distraction, perhaps a diversion, as far as I'm concerned. 

Which is why this classic Alfred Hitchcock movie scene comes to mind.


Investigators uncertain anything hit train before derailment. (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 5/18/2015)

A story of shaky provenance as it is.
The assistant conductor said she heard the regional train engineer say he'd been "hit by a rock or shot at" and she thought she heard the Amtrak engineer say his train had also been struck.

The NTSB said the regional train engineer recalled no such conversation, and investigators listened to the dispatch tape and heard no communications from the Amtrak engineer to the railroad's dispatch center to say that something had struck the train.